[b]NZLARPs committee meeting July 13 2015
Start: 7:48pm[/b]
In attendance: Prema, Walter, Mike, Clare, Dave
Apologies: Daena (who was in Wellington this meeting)
Discussion:
Acceptance of minutes from last meeting: Proposed by Prema, 2nd by Walter, unanimously accepted
Actions from last meeting:
- Budget template - Prema and Walter to put a template together this month.
- Prema caught up with Patrick. He’s interested in a joint application with Council storage, and in Crucible, Paddywack, costuming and NZLARPs going in together for a stall.
- Prema thinks we should do Aethercon again this year. And Librarycon if it happens. At these smaller events, we do make more impact.
Hard to tell how much value we get from Armageddon - we hand out a lot of cards and talk to people.
Mike - we could have a sign up plus enter to win a thing.
We need to ensure we don’t restrict ourselves in terms of communication. Last Armageddon our mailing list sign-up said we would only contact people once. This time, when we collect email addresses, we need to ensure our sign-up is not so restrictive - we should operate on a unsubscribe if you don’t want to receive emails basis instead.
It would be good if games provided us with a blurb so we can email that out to our mailing list - so people know a bit about the upcoming games.
Need to get a monthly newsletter going - but need marketing officer so this can happen.
Hamilton gear fee for Fallout resolved online - we have opted to credit them the gear fee for the first game, it will be factored into costs in subsequent games. This is because the fee was not budgeted for in the first game, and was not caught until late. The Fallout game didn’t hire that much and we think the gear charge was quite large in comparison to what they hired. We are considering restructuring the gear fee levels so smaller games (between 50 to 100 people) don’t have such a big jump in gear costs. We’re thinking about putting one bracket at 50-75 people and another at 76-100, to make the gear fees more balanced.
Or otherwise make 40-60 a range instead.
Action point: Mike to come up with some spreadsheet scenarios, for price brackets for gear fee.
Mike - Do we have data on games and how many attendees per game?
Prema thinks there is a good chance that Malcolm will have these details.
Finance report (Walter):
Moonbright actuals yet to be done. Think there might be some outstanding crew payments (though a lot did come through after game).
Chimera payments coming through nicely. Some discrepancies in payments, as some people have paid for catering at the same time as game fees and some haven’t.
Hogwarts payments have come through for hall hireage.
Dry Spell - a couple of people haven’t paid, but otherwise the finances for that game have gone well.
Gear report (Mike):
• Gear went out for Dry Spell and Moonbright.
• Gear lent to Hamiltonians for game. They’ll bring it back up when they come up for Chimera. There are no games between now and Chimera so this saves them from having to make a special trip up.
• Need a gear rationalisation day - a few extra boxes of gear have turned up.
Marketing Report (Prema):
• Ryan has updated the What is Larp pages - to put active laps / events up top, and to remove games that are no longer running.
• We need a template for the new website. Prema suggests that we have a workshop day to decide on a template.
• Suggestion that we give a Koha to Craig, for hosting our websites for so long.
Discussion of need for games to aim to make a profit. The gear fee does allow us to recover some of the gear storage cost, but making a profit would be useful as it might enable us to bring in enough to pay for all the gear storage. It’s essentially helping to keep the community going.
Social idea of holding a gear day once a month - we would need a free venue though to do this.
Past LARPs:
• Hogwarts - Yule Ball + previous game
• Dry Spell
• Crucible - Festival of Fools plus Microgames
Upcoming events:
• Chimera
• Potential Cthulu larp.
• World that Is - running in Auckland in November
• Potential Percy Jackson larp.
Acceptance of Chimera budget - proposed by Walter, seconded by Mike. Accepted unanimously.
There was no film crew at Moonbright - they decided not to film a week out from the event. Prema thinks in hindsight, they might have been better off going to a Larp combat practice, where there would be more opportunity for fighting.
Next meeting will be at Mike’s place again.
Meeting end: 8:47pm.